prior incantato (and between steps)
by strangesmallbard
Summary: He waves her off, kindly, but he does. "It's the best place for him, Minerva. The only place for him." He apparates away. Minerva does not. (In this world, Minerva McGonagall watches the Dursleys more and does not like what she sees. It turns out parenthood did not pass her by after-all.) (McGonagall/Pomfrey.)


Minerva McGonagall is a very thorough woman.

Not a transfiguration theorem left un-researched, thousands of notebooks filled with possibilities and outcomes, nor an assignment graded without full examination by a rubric, which she updates when needed. Her desk is organized, and she never takes something important lightly.

It's why she's a good professor. It's how she tries to be a decent person.

"Albus," She says again, looking back at the baby they've left on the doorstep. "Are you certain? I can't say it doesn't feel like we just left the boy in front of a forest."

"It'll be fine, Minerva." Albus says, giving that customary smile. She trusts him, but it's a little unnerving to never know the full picture he's seeing. "He's with his family, after-all."

"That doesn't have to mean anything." She says. "Not to these people. Lily told me about her sister, how she'd–"

"Children," Albus says, holding up a hand. "Are children. We cannot expect them to stay as they were. After all, Tom…well, no one expected Tom, did they?"

Tom had charmed nearly everybody in her school. She hadn't bought it, had always seen something shadowed in his gaze. She doesn't bring it up. Instead she says, "And some stay exactly the same, Albus."

He waves her off, kindly, but he does. "It's the best place for him, Minerva. The only place for him." He apparates away.

Minerva does not.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore, for all his greatness, sees too much of that full picture. He sometimes leaves the little things as just that, and does not give them much credence. If the end reached is the right end, then all the little bits and bobs, the pieces of you that got wrenched out of place, will be worth it.

Minerva McGonagall is a thorough woman. She waits until Petunia Dursley screams at the sight of Harry, and takes him in.

That, of course, does not exactly give her the hope she'd been looking for.

* * *

Poppy knows something is wrong, because she always knows. Forty years of deep affection is a long time to know the ins and outs of when a person is upset, and doesn't know how to voice it yet.

They're cuddling on the couch over tea. Her hands are moving through Minerva's hair, now down for the day. It manages to relax her more than Minerva would have thought possible.

It started to rain, and Minerva is glad to know that at least Harry is well out of it.

"Min," Poppy says. "You were quiet all dinner. You didn't tell Sybill to shut up once."

Minerva laughs. "That is a cause for alarm, you're right." She sighs. "Poppy, I'm afraid I've just made a terrible decision."

She watches those so familiar brows furrow. "I often think that in my line of work. The thing you've got to do is just recognize it, and then try to rectify, no time to dwell."

"Is that what I'm doing? Dwelling?" Minerva says.

"Yes, but everyone is dwelling. The war is over, and no one really knows how. Suddenly, we're just supposed to get back to our normal lives." She pauses in her hair. "I assume this is about Harry Potter?"

"Yes." She says. "Truthfully, Poppy, I have no idea what to do."

"You'll think of it, sweet. You won't leave one of your students in danger, not when you can help it."

She frowns. "Harry is a year old, Poppy."

"Well." She says, tightening arm around her. "He will be your student, won't he?"

Minerva's eyes are getting heavy. She thinks about her students, how she'd lost four of them in one awful go. Kids off to war. James laughing through his fear, Lily practicing her hexes well into the night with her brows drawn, Peter a shy, supportive presence, and Sirius' apparently _deceptive_ broad grin. Merlin, she hasn't even had time to cry properly about it. The rest of her starts to feel heavy too, and her eyes sting. "No time to dwell, you said?"

"Give yourself the night." She amends. "Then tomorrow, go back."

* * *

She does go back, once again as a cat.

If Albus finds out, and is upset, well. He never said she couldn't.

She watches as Petunia ignore Harry as he cries, in favor of her own son. She watches as he finally tends to him with a scowl on her face, only rocking him to cease the noise. She watches the husband shake his leg when Harry tries to grasp it to stand.

They leave the boy alone, for hours, in the playpen set up in the living room. Petunia only tends to him when she can hear him crying from another room.

Harry had always known a pair of arms who could hold him. Minerva had been one of those arms, briefly. She can see the distress in him, not knowing why these new people aren't anything like the ones he knows.

The final straw is in the late afternoon, just before the husband comes home. Petunia goes into the backyard with her son, talking in a cheerful voice that he could use some sun, and places him in a baby carrier next to her. Harry remains in the playpen, alone. Predictably, he cries, and predictably, Petunia does not hear him from outdoors.

Minerva has spent more than forty years as a cat animagus. She finds a way in. At the sight of a cat, Harry calms, transfixed by her tail. He laughs when Minerva starts to chase it, in a way she'd never do unless it was to calm a distressed, orphaned one year old. With the same stealth as a human that she has a cat, she fetches Harry food from the kitchen, and casts an echoing spell on the room so that the Dursleys will hear him no matter where they are on the property.

She thinks of Lily, and the night she brought Harry to meet her. Her proud, smile, her tired smile. _James would be here_ , she had said, _but he's recovering from a curse at the base._

This will _not_ do.

* * *

"Pomona, I have to make a move, and I haven't the foggiest how to do it." She says, sinking into the airy warmth of the greenhouse. Some find it over-powering, she finds it comforting. The smell of flora brings a similar nostalgia to old books.

"Well, that's a first, Min." Pomona quips, pulling a bit of fluxweed out of a pot. Her hands are their usual soil-covered.

"Ha." She says, allowing a smile for her oldest friend. "I don't always agree with Albus, but we usually can come to terms. Here, that's not possible."

She shakes out the fluxweed for stray soil. "Do you know for sure that these muggles are rotten?"

"I only know about Petunia, the sister." Minerva says, drumming her fingertips on the table. "But I watched them all day and…. Pomona, I don't want this boy to suffer a terrible childhood for this blood protection when we haven't done any proper research on it. It's old, old magic."

"That it is. I have some scrolls from the fifteenth century about plants that enhance its properties. I can only translate a good half of it."

"Could those plants replicate their properties? If there was some symbolic shift of the blood protection…"

Pomona nods, hesitantly. "Like you said, Min, it's old magic. There's always room for more study."

Minerva sighs. "Magic we have time to study now. Imagine."

"Have you talked to Poppy about this yet?"

"Poppy?" Minerva says, "Well, yes."

Pomona gives a small smile. "I remember when you and she used to talk about having children. Well, you never talked _seriously_ about it, but I always wondered."

Minerva raises a brow into the skies. "Children? What are you talking about?"

Pomona raises a brow of her own. "Harry Potter. He'd need a home, wouldn't he? If you displaced him from the muggles? Hogwarts is a good a home as any."

She stands up, and nearly sputters, if she ever sputtered. "Well, he wouldn't be raised by _us._ Pomona, I'm an old woman! She's an old woman!

"Plenty of children are raised by old women, haven't you read any faerie tales? Muggle or Wizarding, there's a always a story where–"

She starts. _"Hogwarts."_

"Pardon?"

Minerva McGonagall is a thorough woman.

"Thank you, Pomona." She gives an unusual hug. "Thank you."

* * *

"You always said," Minerva begins, "that Hogwarts is the safest place in this corner of the Wizarding World. Especially for children."

Albus sighs. He folds his hands on the desk. "Harry isn't _simply_ a child. You have to understand, Minerva–"

"I perfectly understand. You see, I did quite a bit of research before coming to you, Albus. I know all about that prophecy."

Albus unfolds his hands. He leans back, eyes blinking. "Ah."

She taps her foot. "Yes, _ah_ , so you see–"

"So you understand it is impertinent that Harry Potter remain alive?"

She breathes out sharply. "I _understand_ that prophecies have their place, but I also understand that a childhood should not be the cost. Albus, we don't even know that You-Know-Who will come back!"

"Ah." He says again, and suddenly seems very, very old. He's quite a bit older than her, but she doesn't always remember. "But we do. There's still parts you don't know, Minerva."

She feels something that feels too close to betrayal, somewhere under her ribs. It knocks wind out of her. "Then tell me why I should let Harry be neglected for eleven years."

He folds his hands again. He adjusts his glasses. Fawkes, off to the side, makes a series of squawks. "He'll come back. Tom wasn't counting on living only one life. Harry is the only person who has the ability defeat him. Do not doubt that."

"And won't he do that better," Minerva says, "with a strong foundation?" She can speak this language too, though it doesn't feel right. She's not used to feeling not-right with Albus Dumbledore.

He nods. "Perhaps. But not if he's dead."

She throws up her arms. "Albus, I will _personally_ make sure that no harm comes to Harry Potter should he live at Hogwarts."

His eyes twinkle. She feels relieved at the familiarity, if unsettled. "So you're proposing to take him in, then?"

She remembers Pomona's small smile, Poppy's hands through her hair. _(–Oh Min, imagine us with kids for a moment. –They'd have your patience, I hope. –Nonsense, they'd be bold and a bit brash at every turn.)_

She swallows. "Perhaps I am."

The twinkling continues. "And have you talked to Poppy about that?"

Drat. Double Drat.

She sighs. "Really, Albus."

He chuckles, and then lets his expression turns serious again. His hands unfold. "You're very right about Hogwarts, Minerva. However, no spell or ward is comparable to blood protection in keeping Harry safe and unharmed."

She raises a brow. "And you think I'd leave _that_ out of my research?"

* * *

"Parents!" Poppy says, bustling around the empty Hospital Wing. "Minerva, we're the age of most grandparents!"

"He wouldn't be raised by just us. Pomona, Filius, Rolanda, Charity, …Hagrid, and even Binns have expressed that they would be able to help."

Poppy whirls around. "Still! Min, I don't know– This is definitely not what I meant!"

She deflates, and tries not to show it. "So that's a no, I take it?"

Poppy crosses her arms. Then uncrosses them. She steps close to Minerva and cups her cheeks. She kisses her, as sweet as the first time, outside Minerva's home in Scotland with bright sunny air and tall grass swaying in the breeze.

"It's not a no, you old bird. Give me a few days."

* * *

True to her word, Minerva finds Poppy in the "office", what used to be Poppy's bedroom before they gave up all pretenses in the sixties.

"I assume you'll want to do his bedroom in red-and-gold." She says, fretting about the room with her wand, letting magic carry scraps of a lived life around the room and into their proper pile.

Minerva leans against the door frame, feeling as casual as her sweater and her hair let down into a tail. "I may be biased," she says, "but even I know that a child should not be pushed into one house or another."

Poppy tuts. "Green, then."

Minerva grabs her chest, remembering all of James Potters' dramatics without it all hurting. "Merlin forbid! Actually," she turns her head this way that, pretending to look for lurkers, "...green was my favorite color."

She laughs. "I know, dear." She looks out the window. "Peach," she says, "the sun always hits this room the brightest."

* * *

It takes a full month to prepare. Minerva makes many more trips back to the Dursley's in cat, and then human form.

Lily's love reaches through Harry's young soul, and her love had been at Hogwarts too, loved Hogwarts like a person can only love their home. Lily's love is the connection, and magic is alive, really. Always has been, always will. It listens. With plants from Pomona, a potion, and incantations, Minerva is able to convince the small part of Lily still here that Petunia Dursley is not who can protect Harry.

She doesn't hear words back, only feelings. They prickle her neck, and give her a bout of trepidation. _And you can?_

She sticks up her chin. _Yes._

Poppy is holding her hand. Albus is there too, watching. And then, he relents.

* * *

The Dursley husband is only too happy to hand Harry over. "The little _freak_ would take good and hard-earned money from my own son."

She's scolded children for doing the same for decades, but that doesn't stop her from raising her wand. "Do not insult that boy in front of me again," she says coldly.

He gulps, but opens his mouth to go further.

 _"Boil, boil, toil, and trouble–"_ She begins with all the theatrical menace she can muster, waving her wand around with absolutely no finesse, and he gulps again, steps away from the doorframe. He calls for his wife to say that some freak er– _woman_ from her sister's side of things is here for Harry.

He leaves her sight. She can barely swallow her laugh.

"Oh, thank god," Petunia says at the door a few moments later. "I had hoped it would all be a big mistake." She eyes Minerva warily, stopping at her hat, a rather beautiful one that had been her mother's. "I'll go get him."

And then he's there, wide green eyes, his father's face, and a lighting bolt scar all dumped into her arms unceremoniously. She immediately re-adjusts him on her hip, and he looks at her with all the curiosity in the world.

Petunia stares at him, and seems to realize something. It doesn't soften her expression, but it does cause her eyebrows to furrow. "I didn't get an invitation to the funeral."

"It was all very quick." Minerva says, quietly, because though she loathes this woman, grief is grief. "I can tell you where her grave is, if you'd like."

Petunia opens her mouth, closes, and then shakes her head. "I assume he'll be taken in by one of Potter's lot?"

Harry has grabbed at her ear. She gently detaches his hand. "Yes, something like that."

Petunia holds the pendant of her necklace. She takes a deep breath. "Mail me the address. The," she purses her lips, _"muggle_ way. I will not have _owls_ flying to my home."

Minerva rolls her eyes. She doesn't bother to hide it. "Perhaps."

Petunia stares at Harry again, and then back at her. "Well, goodbye." She says, and slams the door in their faces.

Then, it's just them and the two-o'clock afternoon breeze.

It takes a moment for Minerva to get her bearings and acclimate to the new weight in her arms. Harry babbles something. It sounds a lot like _bye-bye_ , though it could be just sounds.

"Well, Mr. Potter," she says to him, and he giggles. "Let's get you home. Poppy should have mashed peas for your lunch, how does that sound?"

He tugs at her ear again. She smiles.

* * *

a/n: One day I thought to myself, "What if Harry Potter was rescued from the Dursleys by lesbians" and so here we are. (I know all about McGonagall's backstory from Pottermore, but let me just say, JKR missed out big time.)

(Also, thanks to Rayna (vidiabell) on tumblr, I imagined Madam Pomfrey as Helen Mirren.)


End file.
